


The Risk We Took

by ohnosteve



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:33:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28407795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohnosteve/pseuds/ohnosteve
Summary: A ragtag group of teens embark on an ill-advised mission to personally take on an emperor with the power of a demon. The fate of the world (!) depends on a quest fuelled mostly by pride, stubbornness, revenge and a little bit of a crush.
Relationships: Bulma Briefs/Vegeta
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	1. merest mask of gloom

**Author's Note:**

> idk I wrote a bunch of chapters of this so uh here is a thing about wizards and stabbing stuff with swords.

Just a week from home, the woods began to wither and die. Mighty forest trees, some hundreds of years old, gave way to vile things with twisted, ashen trunks and leafless branches that clutched at Bulma's hair like the curious appendages of bats or crows. She had always associated the woods with solitude, but in this lifeless landscape devoid of songbirds or small woodland mammals she realised what she had enjoyed was in fact quiet companionship.

They saw their first one in the evening, as they set up camp, a pathetic husk of a man clawing over the wet leaves with fingers already worn to dust. It looked at them and gurgled and Bulma's breath hitched in her throat audibly. Goku — that was the tall one's name — dispatched the monstrosity with a single stroke of his sword and Krillin — that was the little priest — looked at her sympathetically.

"Don't be scared," he said. "We're here to protect you."

"Oh," she replied. "Thank you." She was excited, not scared, but admitting so would make her seem perverse rather than brave. These boys were younger than her, but worldly, and they wouldn't understand how a sheltered academic might feel anything but terror at sighting her first undead.

He knelt over the corpse. "Skeletons," he announced after a brief inspection.

Bulma scoffed. "That is clearly not a skeleton. It has flesh."

"For now." He lifted the creature's wrist so Bulma could see the bones protruding from the tips of papery fingers. "But we're in for true skeletons as we get closer. They rot fast."

"Aw man." Goku kicked a stone on the ground. "I hate skeletons. Do you have any idea what it's like to try and cut something without muscle or skin?"

The two warriors could not have looked more different next to one another. Krillin, half Goku's size, wore shining metal armour decorated with religious pennants and although his gear was clearly more expensive, Bulma found more comfort in Goku's battered leather armour, moulded to his body as only time and use could do. But she noted Krillin's mace was well-worn and there was nothing so uniquely useful as a priest when faced with the prospect of the undead. She was paying him more than Goku, accordingly, although she hadn't told Goku that.

"Should we still camp here?" She asked, resting a hand on a blackened tree trunk. "Will there be more?"

"Skeletons don't necessarily travel in groups," Krillin replied. "And we can expect any others to be in a similar half-formed state. Goku and I will each watch half the night and there won't be any problems."

"I still think I should take a watch," Bulma replied, but she put her staff down against her bedroll and unbuckled the leather harness in which she carried her spellbook. They'd had this argument each night and she didn't expect to start winning now.

"This is what you hired us for," Goku replied cheerfully. "You rest so you can enjoy your adventure."

Bulma had tried to word her advertisement clearly so that any sellswords would understand well that she was an academic on a mission of research, and an experienced wizard who could hold her own in the field. As soon as these two had laid eyes on her, though, it was apparent they thought she was a young thrillseeker looking for a ride through the outskirts of dangerous territory before returning to the safety of her tower and her books. At nearly eighteen, she probably was unusually sheltered for her age, but regardless of how far she may or may not have ventured from her home in the past, she was a talented magician and had a lot to offer. And they were wrong if they thought they could get away with showing her a few measly skeletons then turning back.

"I don't want you boys too tired out before we even find this necromancer." They smiled at each other indulgently. She considered throwing some of their firewood at them, but either could catch it easily so she just made the fire and settled in for the night.

Bulma got her first chance to show off just a few days later. They had seen more skeletons since, of increasing sophistication and decomposition as the woods grew blacker and more twisted. But skeletons, she had learnt now, were fairly solitary creatures unless kept confined such as in a crypt. They had only seen one or two at a time and they had fallen to sword and mace before Bulma had even gotten her bearings.

By now there were no leaves remaining even on the ground, which was a damp dark earth which sucked greedily at the three travellers' boots, although there had been no rain for a week. The sky here was fairly dark all day, neither with storm clouds nor the blanket of night but a night time purple fog that hung denser and denser ahead of them. There was light enough to see without a torch, still, but it was weak and heavily filtered as though passing through a purple curtain into a darkened room. They were getting close, and when they found themselves passing through another tiny, empty village, Bulma was surprised to see movement in a doorway.

"Someone's alive," she said, for the movement was not similar to the way the skeletons lurched and shambled. The two boys stopped staring at the sky and were instantly ready in fighting stances, stepping in front of her with their weapons in hand. Goku held out his left hand, palm facing her.

"Don't come closer."

"We don't know who it might be," Krillin added.

They moved forward at a steady pace, cautious but unafraid. Bulma ignored them and followed. When the figure leapt from the doorway it took her a moment to realise it wasn't a real person any more, but the boys had no such hesitation. As soon as it was within reach Krillin cracked the grey figure around the knees and as it stumbled sidewards Goku slashed across its belly with his shortsword. The thing tumbled to the ground bonelessly.

"That's not a skeleton," she said.

Goku turned to her. "Bulma, you should have waited. It could have been dangerous. There could have been —"

"More!" Krillin shouted.

The village, more of a hamlet, only boasted five low buildings, but from each one and from the woods surrounding tumbled far too many pale-skinned and red-mouthed creatures, all descending wordlessly upon the three young travellers.

"Get back, Bulma!" Goku shoved her backwards with his body then leapt into the fray, swinging his sword quickly but cleanly.

She stumbled back and nearly fell, cursing Goku under her breath. Ahead of her to the left, Krillin fumbled through a key fob of religious symbols, snatching the one he wanted by feel and holding it up so that six of the things exploded in a flash of light that hurt Bulma's eyes.

But there were too many of them. More came upon Krillin from either side and he couldn't concentrate to communicate with his deities, reduced to swinging his mace and ducking the gnashing teeth and clawing nails. Goku was felling creatures speedily but, like Krillin, he was overwhelmed.

Bulma could help. She wasn't the silly little bookworm they'd assumed. She took her staff in both hands and planted it in front of her. She'd never done this when it counted, but she'd practiced plenty of times in the courtyard of her master's tower and it had always worked.

She uttered low a few words of an ancient language known only to wizards, and from the wet earth sprung up a ring of fire, encircling herself, Goku and Krillin with just a fraction of the undead forces upon them. The creatures kept coming, roasting themselves as they attempted to cross the fiery line. Two of those trapped within the perimeter detached from the boys and came towards her with surprising speed. She could see the pure black orbs which passed for eyes roll wildly, then lock onto her and a thrill of fear shot through her but Bulma steadied her breath, tilted her staff forward and uttered a single word, eyes widening in almost-surprise as the creatures combusted and fell to their knees as they burnt down to their bones.

From there it was quick work for Krillin and Goku to finish off what remained within the circle of flames.

"Ghouls," Krillin said in a shaky voice.

"Nice work, Bulma!" Goku enthused, and slapped her too hard on the shoulder. "I guess we should have believed you when you said you were a fighting wizard, huh?"

"I guess so." She stuck her nose in the air and transferred her staff to rest loosely in one hand, allowing the flames to peter out.

"You're sure there's just one necromancer here?" Krillin asked. Bulma was slightly annoyed that he wasn't congratulating her, too, but she just shrugged.

"That's what I heard. Holed up in the black keep we caught a glimpse of earlier. They say he's an ancient and powerful lich and has been taking the people from surrounding villagers to perform horrible experiments on them. Looks like it."

"No." He shook his head. "First of all, that's not what you told us and the three of us are not equipped to fight an 'ancient and powerful lich'. Secondly, _these_ look like they fit with that story, maybe, but the skeletons don't at all."

"What do you mean? They're all undead." Bulma had been reading up on the undead but very little of what had been printed on the topic was considered appropriate, or even sane, for a classical wizard to look at. That was the whole reason she was out here. She needed to know more about the world and what lurked within it, and her tower was fast turning from a sanctuary of learning to a prison of tunnel vision.

Krillin sighed. "Look, these are ghouls. They've been turned recently after death, through one of a specific family of dark rituals. They don't rot, although they can starve, so they're more of a creature than a corpse. Skeletons are entirely different. They don't have to be turned immediately after death and they are literally animated corpses, they start out like the flesh creatures we first saw and gradually the flesh disintegrates from their bones and they become true skeletons. Their behaviour is different, their motivations are different and the magic used to create them is as dissimilar as you can get while keeping both within the school of necromancy. Something isn't right here."

"Maybe two necromancers are fighting each other," Goku suggested. "By the time we get to the keep they might even have already killed each other." He looked disappointed by his own suggestion. "Aw. We should probably hurry if we want a good fight."

"We should stay out of it," Krillin said solidly.

Bulma shook her head. "I decided I was going to save these villages from the necromancer and I'm going to do it. Besides, I need to see…"

"What do you need to see?"

She needed to see the necromancer's experiments, his notes and his research. She was not the sort of person who would mess around with necromancy herself, of course. It was wrong, and it hurt people, but she did want to understand it. She couldn't think of a better way to satisfy her curiosity and atone for it all in one step than by defeating a necromancer and having a bit of a snoop around his laboratories. When she returned to her tower triumphant nobody could lecture her about forbidden knowledge if she'd acquired it doing such a good deed.

"I need to see an end to necromancy in this world," she finished loftily. "I would have thought a priest would understand."

Krillin muttered something she couldn't catch.

"Yeah!" Goku pumped a fist in the air. "Let's get him! I bet if we walk for a couple more hours before we make camp, we can get to that keep tomorrow and then this lich is toast."

It took them two further days to reach the keep, which seemed smaller up close and was partially caved in at the top.

"This doesn't look much like the home of an ancient and powerful lich," Bulma said uncertainly. "But this is where I was told."

"Necromancers are eccentric," Krillin said. "Sometimes these places have an extensive underground network you wouldn't expect. Be on your guard."

"Neat," said Goku.

The doors were barred, but it was a simple wooden barrier which gave when Goku and Krillin together heaved against the doors. The trio stood in the doorway staring into the dark of the keep. The dim, purple light of outside made no attempt to infiltrate the inky black of the entrance. Krillin lit a torch but when he held it out the darkness swallowed it along with his hand. He put it out and stowed it. Bulma said a few words and the blue crystal at the tip of her staff glowed with a blue light that pulsed against the unnatural blackness, casting a cool, dim light across the stone corridor ahead.

"I'll walk up front," Bulma said. She thought she sounded pretty brave for someone about to go straight from interpreting illuminated manuscripts to slaughtering an evil lich without any of the in-between steps a battle wizard was ordinarily required to master. Her fingers trembled slightly around her staff as she stepped into the dark, but a hand on each elbow pulled her back.

"No way," said Krillin and Goku in unison.

"Well I'm not handing over my staff and you can't get anywhere without it."

"Just angle it forward between us so we can see where we're going," suggested Krillin. "Worst case scenario, if anything comes at us down the corridor our light source is safely protected."

She made a show of huffing about it, but secret relief washed over her and she obliged. Krillin and Goku stepped down the narrow hallway ahead of her, each with his back to one side of the corridor, shuffling sidewards with her standing behind them, dipping her staff in the space between them.

"Why are you crab-walking like that?" she whispered after a few steps.

"I'm real bad at spotting traps," Goku said, "especially in the dark. But usually trap triggers are in the middle because that's where people step." He tapped his temple with one finger. "You have to think about these things."

Bulma gaped. "You didn't want to point that out to me? I've just been walking in the middle like an idiot! What would you have done if I-"

There was a clicking noise from the floor and everyone stopped moving. A second later came the sound of stone grinding on stone, and then Krillin was screaming. Bulma dropped the tip of her staff to the floor and lit up a trough in the floor where the stone tiles had dropped away to reveal a shallow pit of spikes, maybe a foot across and stretching across the whole width of the corridor. Krillin wrenched his foot out and crouched to inspect the damage.

"That's not designed to kill," Bulma said.

"Unless it's poisoned," Krillin added bitterly.

Goku dropped to his hands and knees and inclined his face towards the ditch to take a sniff. "It seems okay, Krillin. I've got a good nose for that sort of thing."

"Not sure I trust my life to the sniff test," Krillin replied, but he seemed relieved.

"Do you think this means the rest of the traps are easily avoidable, too? We could have just stepped over this if we'd spotted it. Or…" Bulma rubbed her chin thoughtfully. "Maybe it's a warning. 'Turn back while you can, the next test won't be so simple'."

Krillin groaned but got back to his feet, testing his weight on the injured one.

"Or the mark of the truly paranoid - all the traps have to be easily bypassed without disarming them so they can all be ready and armed all of the time."

They continued on with Bulma theorising about the nature of the traps in a soft voice while Goku searched for more by tapping the walls and floor ahead with his sword before each step. It was slow, agonising progress with no easy way to mark progress, for the doorway had been swallowed by the darkness almost as soon as they'd stepped inside, and the corridor was featureless.

"Where do you think the rooms are?" Goku asked after what seemed like hours of monotony. "I haven't seen any doorways and I swear we've been walking a long time. It's a round keep, it can't just be one long hallway."

Krillin and Bulma looked at each other in the faint light.

"Maybe we just haven't walked as far as we thought," Krillin said. "We're going pretty slow."

"But we went past two more traps," Goku whined. "They can't be that close together. And you've had time to stop limping."

"He's right," Bulma said hollowly. "We've gone straight for far too long without seeing any other rooms or corridors. The keep didn't even look big enough for a straight corridor this long."

They stood in silence for an unmeasurable moment.

Goku tapped at the floor and took another step to the edge of their circle of light. "I guess we just keep going."

"I guess so," Bulma said, and followed him, though she was starting to think they should turn around and leave. If she was right, and the space inside the keep was distorted to be bigger than the outside, that was magic far beyond the ordinary small-time necromancer. She wasn't stupid. She knew that any lich was too much for her to begin with, but she thought with a swordsman to fend off the shambling hordes and a priest to help her battle the undead wizard they would be able to at least escape with their lives and a few souvenirs. It was the souvenirs she was after, and she figured any lich twiddling his thumbs in this provincial location, playing around with village people, was new to undeath and still coming into his powers. They might be able to trick him.

But not a power that could do something like this. She glanced backwards into the black and considered retreating, but if he could distort this corridor by stretching it, why not by twisting also? They were better continuing into the belly of the beast than living out their last days tormented into madness by a looping corridor with no escape.

She just had to hope they weren't already in that situation. Her only consolation was that the traps they were encountering weren't repeating. Yet. She decided not to share her concerns with the group.

"I've got an idea," Krillin said. "Goku, pry out a piece of stone next time you see one that's cracked."

Goku responded by slamming the hilt of his sword into the wall repeatedly until one of the stones began to crumble, then clawing out the loose pieces.

"Or that. Give me a piece."

Goku handed over a stone and Krillin threw it lazily ahead. It clattered in the darkness. Nothing happened.

"If we hear the stone hit something we'll know the corridor is turning about itself without us noticing," Bulma breathed.

Krillin gave her an odd look, distorted in the crystal light. "I'm trying to estimate how far away the stairs are." He threw another piece, harder, and it landed unremarkably. He threw twice more, then Goku took the last piece, wound his arm back dramatically and pelted it as hard as he could. It clattered to the floor in the distance, then fell again and again.

"Stairs," Krillin announced triumphantly. "Not as close as I'd hoped, and they're going down, but at least we won't be in this forsaken corridor any more."

Two traps later, one relying on arrows which had rotted in place to the point of uselessness, they were stood at the top of a staircase leading down into yet more darkness. It felt to Bulma as though they had been traversing this keep for the better part of the day, and she had no way to determine whether it had really been hours or merely minutes. She was only certain it hadn't been days by the fact that she didn't urgently need water or sleep, and even then that could be the magical effect of the place.

"We have to go down," she said in a bold voice that sounded like someone else's.

"Actually," Krillin said. "We could go back, if we wanted to."

"I want to go down," said Goku.

"Two against one," Bulma said, and started down the steps, leaving the boys scrambling to try and get in front of her.

There were traps here, too, but they weren't set, and as they descended the keep the darkness changed. It was no brighter by the time they reached the lower floor, but Bulma's crystal cast a wider light and the dark without it felt natural, the simple absence of light rather than the thick blanket of black they'd suffered in the corridor.

"Try your torch again," Bulma suggested, and lit it with a tap of her staff when Krillin held it aloft. It cast a natural, flickering light across a corridor with, blessedly, a doorway already visible from where they stood. She extinguished her own light, secretly growing tired from maintaining it, and the group set to exploring with a new vigour.

The doorway led to a little storeroom, dark and mostly empty. The food supplies in old crates were mouldy and useless. Everything else had apparently been ransacked by someone else. Bulma supposed liches did not have much use for worldly goods.

All the little rooms on this level of the keep were equally useless. Store rooms, a bedroom containing no personal effects, a little gaol cell with the metal lattice rusted away so that Goku could snap pieces off with his fingers. A further set of stairs beckoned at the end of the short corridor, framed by two stone bookcases holding, to Bulma's surprise, books which were well-thumbed but unruined, unmarred even by dust.

It was a curious little collection. There were a few interesting necromancy texts, which Bulma carefully stored in a canvas bag she had brought for this purpose, but the shelves were also studded with the sort of books she had mastered early in her own studies of magical theory. ' _Introductory Ritual Design_ ' did not belong in the same collection as a book of summonings bound in tattooed elf skin. She opened a few to see if the innocuous covers hid great secrets, but they were exactly as advertised. Somebody had made notations in them, in a script she didn't recognise. They were a beginner's notes, she could tell, with simple facts of theoretical magic underlined or circled and notes made on even the simplest rituals.

She was about to ask if either of the boys could identify the language when Krillin held up a finger to his lips in a hushing motion and indicated the stairwell before extinguishing his torch. Bulma frowned. They needed that light. But when she stepped up she saw his reason. The stairwell let down briefly to a wooden door, and below the door a slat of light glowed warmly. So, their lich was home.

Goku moved quickly and quietly in the dark, padding silently down the stairs to take up position at the door. He pressed an ear to it but apparently didn't hear anything unexpected, because Krillin followed, as quietly as he could in his armour, halfway down the stairs. Bulma waited at the top, hidden in the dark. Once the boys were in battle she would slip in and take stock of the study or laboratory as quickly as she could, sizing up anything worth taking before assessing whether the battle was worth fighting or if this would purely be a thieve and flee operation - assuming they could make it back out through that corridor with the lich operational and aware of their presence.

A flaw in her plan. She opened her mouth to tell the boys the books were enough and they should retreat before they got in too deep, but Goku had already shouldered in the door and both he and Krillin were charging forward with a unified shout.


	2. only an old door

Goku and Krillin sounded their battle cry, and from within the room came a shout in return. It sounded surprised. That was a good sign, Bulma thought, and she slipped into the room behind them without noticing that the cries had not been followed by the sounds of battle.

She sidled through the door and saw Krillin and Goku stopped dead in front of a large desk. "Goku! Krillin! What are you doing? Did he cast something… on... you?" Her voice trailed off as she took in all the occupants of the room.

In preparation for this trip, Bulma had done much research into liches. She had read countless descriptions, found as many artistic representations as she could across various cultures. She was prepared for anything she found in this keep, from a mouldering, grey-skinned corpse held up by stubborn magic to a terrifyingly majestic skeleton king with eyes of flame and everything in between. What she had not prepared for was a simply dressed boy in black, standing on his own behind the huge wooden desk with a dagger held up in a defensive position.

"Who are you?" spat the stranger. He was, she realised, not a boy - as much a young man as she was a woman, and she hated to be called a girl.

"Who are _you_?" asked Bulma. "Where's the lich?"

"Lich?" Confusion washed over his face, then a sort of wary comprehension. "Me. I'm the necromancer of this keep. Get out of here and I'll spare your life."

She laughed, and took one hand off her staff. Goku and Krillin kept their eyes trained on their new company. "You? You don't look a necromancer to me, boy. A thief, perhaps. I'll give you that you're dedicated to have made it past the undead and the cursed corridor to start your looting, but it ends here. We've come on a noble mission and we aren't going to halt it to chat with a street urchin who got lucky."

His face twisted into a nasty scowl. He reached into the air with his free hand and made a fist, twisting his wrist as he did so. Under Bulma's feet the stone floor gave way into pebbles and she had to scramble, shrieking, to the side to regain her footing as a pit into nothingness appeared where she had been standing.

"Do not mock me, girl. You know nothing of the power afforded to me by being a - a lich."

He took a few steps as though to come around the side of the desk, and Goku and Krillin moved in time to keep themselves between Bulma and the false lich.

"So you made the ghouls," Krillin said.

The young man smirked. "I did."

"And the skeletons?"

"Yes," he said, but the smirk faltered and it was an obvious lie, in Bulma's opinion. "I made those, too."

"Why?" she asked.

He clearly hadn't been expecting the question and it took him a moment to come up with an answer. "That's just… what we do. Liches are undead and we are compelled to create even more undead to rise up and overtake the living."

Bulma snorted. She had clearly done more reading on the matter of liches than this man.

When his dark eyes settled back on her she thought she saw hatred in them. He twisted his fist again and she felt the world fall out from underneath her. Her staff clattered to the floor as her hands instinctively opened and her arms stretched out, trying to catch herself, but before the earth could swallow her up Krillin's arms were around her and she was clinging to the armour at his neck while Goku threw himself at their opponent.

Goku leapt in while the man was still watching Bulma and slashed him from shoulder to navel, cutting through a black quilted vest like it was nothing, but the wound was shallow and the man dropped his fist and twisted around to drive his dagger into Goku's thigh. Goku cried out and jumped back, keeping his sword in a defensive position as he regained his balance. His opponent breathed heavily and watched Goku closely, sinking into a ready stance with Goku's blood trickling down the dagger's hilt and over his hand.

It seemed like a long moment the two young men stood sizing one another up. Both with wild dark hair and pitch black eyes, Bulma supposed from the brown tails resting at each one's waist that they were of the same peculiar race, although she had heard little about saiyans before this past week and Goku himself seemed to have limited knowledge of his people. From what he did know and she had read, Bulma surmised them to be a race of large, highly physical warriors, not necromancers barely bigger than herself. When he was dead, it would be interesting to try and trace this wizard's past and find where he fit into their society.

Both moved at once, and Bulma's thoughts snapped back from the academic to pure survival. They were moving so fast she had trouble following either blades or bodies. Goku had the advantage in size and reach, both in himself and his weapon, but the other man clearly knew how to use his weaknesses to his own advantage, and there was no clear upper hand for either at this point in the fight.

Krillin pulled her further from the chasm in the floor and let go of her arms. He stood up, testing his injured foot, and beginning a cat-like approach to the hind side of the skirmish. He had his mace at the ready, but it was impossible to be silent in metal armour and Bulma could see the moment where the man's eyes snapped back to take in Krillin's movements. With the dagger held out to fend off Goku, he lifted that free hand again, curling in some of his fingers.

She didn't wait to see if this was the floor trick again or something else. Bulma snatched up her staff and from her seat on the ground yelled a single word of power. One whole side of the room exploded into flames and the man's eyes went wide.

"No!" he cried, and his dagger clattered to the floor. He lifted both arms, hands open, and pulled them towards him. The fire moved his way as though he had reached out and pulled the very air like a piece of cloth. The flames folded in upon themselves as they moved and puffed into nothing more than smoke about Krillin's head.

The man grabbed Krillin by the ear and hurled him to the floor, Goku forgotten as he crossed the floor to a low cot on the fire-damaged side of the room. Bulma realised for the first time that a small figure was lying under the heavy fur draped over the cot and a hard lump rose in her throat as she considered the possibility that she had just burnt a child alive. But there had been no screaming, and what would a necromancer, even such a strange one as this, be doing with a child in their care?

"Are they alive?" Goku was moving towards the cot. His motions were cautious and he kept his sword ready, but his voice was soft and concerned. Bulma, too, stood and moved closer. She could see a little face, soft and maybe younger even than Goku or Krillin, beneath a similar flame of hair as the necromancer's, but the face was still and ashen.

They waited as the man knelt beside the cot, checking the fur and the white face. Abruptly, he turned to look straight at Krillin. "You," he said roughly. "You are a priest, yes?"

Krillin nodded, scrambled back to his feet.

"Very well. I will go peacefully with you on one condition."

* * *

It was clear to Bulma that this young man had no control over the strange corridor above, but luckily he had a back way out of his keep. Bulma thought they should execute him, and Krillin agreed, but instead she found herself walking at the back of a chain which started with Krillin, followed by their prisoner carrying his boy wrapped in the fur, then Goku and finally herself. Goku could be surprisingly convincing with the simplest of words.

"When did he die?" Bulma thought she detected a trace of nervousness in Krillin's calm demeanour.

"Five days."

Krillin slowed to walk at the man's elbow, peering down at the body. "He does not look five days dead."

"I have preserved him with cold."

It hadn't been particularly cold in the keep, Bulma thought, and Krillin frowned as though he shared her skepticism, but when he pulled off a glove and reached over to touch two fingers to the boy's forehead he just nodded.

"I can't do anything past seven days," Krillin said.

"That's not enough time to get to a town with an operational temple," Goku added. Everything within a day or two had already been abandoned as the rot spread out from the black keep. "Can you do it in the forest, Krillin?"

Krillin ran a hand over his bald head. Bulma could see him sweating from where she stood. "I can try," he said, "but I don't know if I'll be able to commune adequately to make the request without a temple or proper offerings. It might not be successful."

"What happens if you can't raise him?" she asked.

"Nothing, but if we fail once we won't be able to try again."

The necromancer made a noise like an angry growl.

"It's not as though there are a lot of other options. You already laid waste to everywhere we might have had a better chance. It's now or never for this kid."

There were no arguments, and they walked in silence for some time before Krillin decided they had reached an adequate location. In what had once been an agricultural field but was now lifeless and without any feature beyond the same black mud as everywhere else, Krillin drew out a large circle in the sticky earth with a stick. He punctuated the circle with religious symbols at regular intervals, and from a pouch at his waist he sprinkled some kind of dried offering on each symbol. He nodded to the necromancer.

The man entered the circle and laid down the boy, pulling away the fur to reveal a miniature of himself, in matching black from head to toe. He was far too young to have a son this age so Bulma guessed they must be brothers and felt a pang of sympathy in spite of the man's sins. From a bundle within the furs he placed next to the body a finely-made shortbow and quiver of arrows, a wooden carving Bulma couldn't make out and a worn cloth monkey that rightly belonged to a much younger child. Krillin had said it was easier for the soul to return if the body was surrounded by reminders of life.

Krillin used his stick to smooth over the man's footprints within the circle, then instructed the others to keep an eye out for undead, who might be attracted to the ritual.

He looked up at the purple sky, said a short prayer and stepped into the circle. His feet did not sink into the mud in spite of his heavy armour and he drifted noiselessly into a cross-legged seat by the boy's head. He placed his hands gently at the boy's temples and returned his attention to the sky. Bulma could see his lips moving but not hear the words. She tried to keep her eyes on the twisted woods surrounding the field, but she was fascinated by the ritual happening next to her. She had very little knowledge of divine intervention, this being an entirely different way to influence reality than the arcane magic she studied.

But Krillin's conversation with the gods dragged on, and she found herself bored. A half-dessicated skeleton stumbled in their direction from the closest village, and she prepared her staff but the necromancer reached out with his bare hand, closed a fist and the creature's skull caved in on itself. It dropped, and she wondered how he did it. The only way she knew to cast was to recite the chants recorded in her spellbook. She had read once about a defunct school of wizardry in which the mages would cut out their own tongues as a pledge of dedication, and cast through sigil work and writings, but this man did not seem to use any language at all. She wondered if he had spells tattooed upon his body, perhaps that could work. She studied him, trying to imagine how that would be executed, until he noticed her eyes on him and stared her down.

When she looked back at Krillin his eyes were closed. The purple sky was beginning to swirl with deep blue, a whirlpool forming in the ominous fog, centred over the ritual circle. She and Goku looked up. The blue was more of the ocean than the sky. She wished she could preserve the image. The necromancer looked down and let out a cry.

The boy was sinking into the mud. His feet had already disappeared into bubbling blackness, and his white hands were barely visible. Krillin held his head well out of the mud but the rest of him was sliding slowly down into the earth.

Bulma's hand snapped out and she grabbed the necromancer by the wrist just as he stepped forward to broach the perimeter of the circle.

"You have to let him try," she said. "If the boy is gone, he was already lost to you."

The man snarled at her wordlessly, but he looked down at the circle scratched in the mud and took a step back.

With Goku, they watched as the boy's legs and arms were sucked under and the mud began bubbling up around his waist. Krillin, too, was beginning to sink. The black mud slurped up around his legs, seeping into the joints in his armour, and although he never opened his eyes or stopped his silent chanting, Bulma could see the panic in his face. The sky swirled with increasing intensity and a new wind whipped Bulma's blue hair around her face. Krillin's fingers were digging into the boy's face now, his neck straining as he struggled to pull the small figure's head up, clear of the mud.

"Krillin!" Goku cried as the priest's waist disappeared below the field's surface. One of the boy's shoulders was sucked under. Bulma mentally riffled through her spellbook, trying desperately to find something she could use to help Krillin. The boy was gone, as far as she was concerned; she could do nothing for him. The necromancer was shouting in a rough tongue but most of the sound was lost to the stinging wind that swirled around the edges of the circle.

And then a little hand burst up through the mud and the small face burst to life, gasping and thrashing and crying. The necromancer was in the circle before anyone could say anything, plunging his arms into the mud to the shoulders in order to physically haul the small boy from danger. Together, Goku and Bulma helped Krillin pull his legs free, and the priest stood shakily while the boy lay on the ground panting and looking at the sky. The wind died down to a breeze, then stilled as the swirling hole in the sky closed up and the world was bathed again in murky purple light.

"Vegeta!" the boy sobbed, still kicking as though he were drowning. "Vegeta, help me!"

The man - maybe Vegeta - knelt by the boy and spoke in a voice too low for Bulma to catch. He fished the boy's half-submerged belongings from the mud and pressed them into the boy's chest. Small, shaking hands closed around the bow and the cloth toy.

They waited patiently while the boy cried, none of them in a position to judge how one reacted to having been dead for five days, until eventually Goku pointed out that they should make as much progress as possible before nightfall. The time of day seemed to have no bearing on the activity of the undead, but the absolute darkness of night under a starless, moonless sky did make them more difficult to deal with.

"I'm Tarble," the boy said quietly, sitting up while his protector buckled his quiver to his back for him. "Did you come to save me?"

Bulma looked uncomfortably at the necromancer.

"They came to destroy me," he said.

"Vegeta?"

"You're safe. These people will take you as far as Hjalmar."

Tarble crawled onto his hands and knees, then lifted himself to his feet with effort. "Hjalmar? I thought we were headed south once you…" He looked around at Bulma, Goku and Krillin. "I thought we were headed south."

"You're going to Hjalmar, then north to Gento. I'll give you money so you can hire yourself some protection until you can lose yourself in Mok."

Tarble's eyes were glassy and confused. "I think he's a little bit disoriented," Bulma suggested gently.

Vegeta's neck snapped around so he could tell her very clearly to fuck off. She gasped and took a step back. Finished with the quiver's buckle, he stood and stepped into the space she'd vacated.

"I'm just trying to help. He clearly has no idea what's going on. You're making him even more confused. Let him adjust."

"You don't get to tell me what to do," he spat.

"Actually." She drew herself up to her full height, almost his equal. "Under the terms of our agreement, I do. Krillin saves this kid, you come quietly and do as we say until Hjalmar, where you'll face justice."

"Huh?" Tarble looked back and forth between them. "I don't understand. Vegeta?"

"Let's go," said Goku, stepping up and placing a big hand on Vegeta's shoulder. Vegeta shrugged it off, but Goku replaced it immediately, squeezing slightly on the edge of the wound he'd inflicted in their earlier fight. "Let's all just go."

They made good time in spite of Tarble. Although he'd stumbled uselessly for the first hour or so, once he got used to his legs again he was quick and sure-footed, at the edge of a village even picking off a single ghoul at the front of a small group with an arrow.

"Make them stop," Bulma ordered, as the remaining few stepped over their comrade to plow through a fetid duck pond towards them.

Goku pulled his sword.

"Vegeta," she said, more forcefully. "Make them stop."

He looked at her blankly.

"These are your constructs, are they not? Make them stop."

"Oh." He held up a hand towards them uncertainly and said "stop". They did not stop. He tried again with a word in that language Bulma didn't recognise, then turned back to her and shrugged.

"What kind of a necromancer are you?" she asked, incredulous.

"Vegeta's not a-"

He slapped Tarble around the ear and the smaller brother cringed.

"Don't hit him!" Bulma went to place her hands protectively on Tarble's shoulders, but the boy ducked away from her and hid behind Vegeta.

"Thanks for the assistance," Krillin interrupted.

Bulma spun around to see Krillin and Goku panting over a small pile of defeated ghouls. She blushed with regret at missing another chance to show off. "I was trying to get Vegeta to help but I guess 'come peacefully' doesn't technically include full cooperation. We should have negotiated terms better."

"We should camp," Krillin said. "That ritual took it out of me. I'm in no shape to keep fighting, should it come to that."

"Not here," Vegeta said. "The ghouls congregate closer to the settlements."

"Can't you just put up some kind of anti-ghoul spell or something?" Goku asked. "You can control the undead, right? Just keep them away."

"Why should I help you?" Vegeta replied like a snotty child.

"I wouldn't trust him anyway, Goku." Bulma narrowed her eyes at the man who didn't seem to realise he was their prisoner. "Let's just walk on for an hour. We still have light, such as it is."

Krillin sighed, but trudged forward.

When they did make camp they set up, treated Goku's wounds and ate as a group, but when it was time for sleep they bound Vegeta's and Tarble's hands and feet. Vegeta winced as Goku pulled at his right arm and twinged the injured soldier, but repeated his refusal of any aid. Tarble was clearly confused, but he followed his brother's lead and quietly accepted the treatment.

Bulma was able to successfully negotiate for her own watch this night. Goku was injured and Krillin exhausted, and although they were reluctant to let a paying client take on this duty they didn't have many other options if they were to be in any shape to travel. She took the final shift, choosing to wake up early rather than stay up late, and when Krillin shook her awake she felt good about things. She had snagged some excellent rare books that were well worth the trip, and they had successfully apprehended the necromancer without any loss of life. Her comrades were beginning to respect her and she was finally being trusted with a bit of responsibility.

She sat where she'd slept, on the opposite side of the dead fire from the boys. Krillin returned to his bedroll, together with Goku forming a flank either side of Vegeta and Tarble, who slept back to back on the bare mud. The woods around them were dead, black and twisted and the ground felt wet and unnatural beneath her bedroll, but they would be back in natural forest soon, and this place, too, would begin to heal once the blight of necromancy was lifted from it. Things were coming to rights.

From her pack she retrieved a small leatherbound journal and a stick of willow charcoal. With one eye on the surrounds she began to sketch the face of the ghouls she'd seen, then everything went blank.

When she woke both Krillin and Goku were bent over her, concern writ large across their faces as they asked her overlapping questions about what had happened. She turned her head to look back at the camp.

Vegeta and Tarble were gone.


	3. the frost showed its fires

They searched. They split up, Goku to the east and Krillin and Bulma to the west. She wanted to argue that she could search on her own to cover more area, but it was difficult to see how she could be convincing after her pathetic showing on watch. They found nothing, not even footprints in the mud that clung to their ankles.

"Maybe they got eaten by their own ghouls," Krillin suggested when they met back up at camp.

"I think the ghouls would have tried to eat us too, if they'd found us," Goku said, taking the suggestion at face value in spite of Krillin's light, jesting tone.

"What do you want to do?" Krillin asked, watching Bulma now with a newly serious expression. She was reminded that these were not her friends but her employees, and though they were tired, Goku was injured and she had messed up, they would follow her lead.

"I suppose I have half of what I came for," she replied. More than half, if she were honest. Taking in or killing the local necromancer had always been a bonus. The esoteric texts tucked away in her canvas satchel were the real prize. "I don't think they'll go back to the keep and we don't have any other clues where they'd be heading, unless they go on to Hjalmar anyway, so without tracks I don't think we have any option but to head home."

"We could go to Hjalmar," Goku suggested. "Try to catch up with them along the way."

"Vegeta wanted Tarble to go to Hjalmar," Bulma mused, "but we really have no indication he plans to go there himself. I don't think Tarble is worth catching."

Krillin crossed his arms. "He may seem young and innocent, but some of those skeletons were definitely more than five days old. He was alive for some of what went down here, and probably complicit."

Bulma hummed. She wasn't sure she wanted to share her belief that Vegeta was not the necromancer responsible for the skeletons. Whether he was a necromancer at all, she was unconvinced, but if he were she suspected Krillin's early two necromancer theory was right after all. She wanted time to think, but it didn't pay to spend time sitting around pondering while undead lurked potentially behind every tree.

"I want to go home," she said at last.

If Goku or Krillin objected, they didn't say so, just packed up camp and made the heading.

They saw no more ghouls as they travelled through increasingly thick and well-grown forest, only a few solitary skeletons, easily dispatched, and these too were gone by the time the trees had leaves once more and the fog had lifted from the sky. There was no road directly between Bulma's home and the area they had been visiting, only winding woodland trails, so they cut through the thick of the forest to save time getting to the road to the nearest town, once the furthest she'd ever been from her tower. Spirits were high, and they chatted like old friends as they walked, like children as they lay under the stars each night.

When they found the road they exclaimed with celebration. Goku announced that he was going to spend his whole pay on the best feed of his life, once they reached town. Krillin chided him for being fiscally irresponsible then jokingly claimed he would spend all his on erotic engravings. Bulma playfully threatened not to pay them at all.

Not more than twenty minutes down the wide dirt road, Goku stopped dead in the middle of conversation and his expression snapped serious. He drew his sword.

"I can smell blood."

Bulma nodded and adjusted her grip on her staff, feeling like a seasoned warrior. Beside her, Krillin took a hold of his mace and ran his free fingers over the metal ring holding his icons, as though to refamiliarise himself with their feel.

They fanned out into the trees, moving ahead with Goku on one side of the road and Krillin and Bulma together on the other. As the road curved, the first thing Bulma saw was the trade caravan lying on its side, sprouting arrows like a great wooden hedgehog. The second thing she saw was the blood, splashed out across the dirt in great dark pools. There were no humanoid corpses visible but the caravan's two horses lay on their sides in the road, throats slashed.

"They didn't take the horses," Krillin murmured. It hadn't struck Bulma as odd, but when she thought about it a good horse was an expensive item, and a dead-broke caravan animal would surely be easy enough to lead away and sell. Bandits, perhaps, would be loathe to waste the animals like this.

And something felt wrong to her. Beyond practical thoughts on the desirability of livestock, she could feel a hint of magic in the air, something thick and cold and unpleasant. She licked her lips and wished she hadn't, for the air tasted sour.

On the other side of the road, Goku was approaching the caravan cautiously. Krillin pulled something from his fob with a metallic click and Bulma clenched both hands around her staff, but Goku sniffed around the caravan for a few moments then indicated safety.

The caravan had been thoroughly looted, and what the attackers hadn't taken they had destroyed, leaving behind tatters of fabric and smashed ceramics. Bulma picked through the broken crates, trying to discern what the bulk of the cargo might have originally been, but was sent cold when she picked up one box to reveal a symbol painted in blood on the side of the caravan's interior.

"Krillin? Do you recognise this?"

He came over and inspected the intricate pattern. "This." He hovered a gloved finger an inch from the macabre painting and traced out a symbol that looked random to Bulma. "It's an asterism within the devil's festival constellation. It's supposed to depict mouths crying out in 'exquisite suffering', if you believe those two words can belong together." He hesitated, then dropped his hand. "I don't recognise the rest, but with symbology like that it's almost certainly demonic. We should get out of here."

She shivered. "You think someone's coming back?"

From behind them, Goku let out a cry. Bulma spun around and saw him stagger, an arrow protruding from his shoulder. Behind him, four figures in blue emerged from the forest, two with bows cocked.

"Something's funny about this arrow," Goku slurred, stumbling into Krillin. "I don't feel so good." He dropped to his knees in the dirt.

"Don't move," Krillin told Bulma. He felt around Goku's shoulder without taking his eyes off the men in front of them. "Two bows, handaxes, a spellbook. We can't take this group between the two of us. Any ideas?"

She took her eyes off the archers to look at Goku, who was clutching his arm and grimacing. "Can you run?" she asked him in a whisper. He nodded. "I can disguise our escape."

The archers were in place at the treeline, but Handaxes and Spellbook were still walking towards them. Handaxes looked to be one of the men of the north Bulma had read about, tall and with a similar deep tan to Goku and the necromancer they'd just lost, but no tail. Spellbook was an elegantly bejewelled green man who might have been beautiful if Bulma weren't currently associating him with the demonic symbol she'd just found in the ruined caravan.

Krillin shrugged, apparently not having any better ideas, and Bulma recited a quick chant under her breath.

Instantly, several copies of themselves appeared in the road. Bulma and Krillin ran in opposing directions towards the safety of the trees, Krillin dragging Goku by the hand, and their copies responded by moving erratically themselves. Every few moments, as long as Bulma kept her mind focussed, they or their copies would shimmer momentarily and a new mirage would split off to make their own run, so that although Bulmas and Krillins, and even some struggling Gokus were constantly disappearing into the trees the road remained a confusing mess of bodies running and staggering in every direction.

Handaxe sunk into a low stance and swung at the first person to come within arm's reach, but his axe sliced through air and the mirage Bulma had summoned continued to run. He swore, moved hesitantly in one direction then another, unable to commit himself to a single target.

Spellbook seemed unaffected. He lifted one graceful hand and said "shoot them all."

In a moment the air was a thicket of arrows as the two archers attempted to spread their efforts across as many targets as possible. An arrow thudded into the ground at her feet, narrowly missing her boot. Bulma squeaked and changed direction, and there was her mistake.

Handaxes, watching the action, saw her react to danger in a manner unlike the mirage copies, and locked eyes with her. Her blue eyes widened and she whirled around, ran as directly opposite him as she could. He was faster than she was. He wrapped one arm around her neck, pulling her to a sudden halt, and pressed the edge of one axe against her cheek.

"Aren't you a pretty thing," he breathed against the shell of her ear and she thrashed desperately, kicking her heels against his shins to no effect. He laughed in a raspy voice and she called out for Krillin and Goku but her only reply was a startled cry of pain. As Handaxes spun her around to face Spellbook Bulma caught a glimpse of Goku with an arrow embedded in his calf. Projectiles bounced off Krillin's armour but as the archers honed in on the correct target she had to assume it was only a matter of time before one of them found their mark in his unprotected head or neck. She looked back to the archers, preparing their next shots.

And the tree they stood under lifted itself out of the ground as though it had simply grown tired of being stood in one place, the earth beneath swelling and pushing until the roots broke free of their confines and the old oak toppled, crushing both archers with a pair of twin screams. Then Bulma heard the whip of another arrow, felt its wind against her face and heard the solid sound as it lodged itself in flesh and she was the one screaming, sure that she was shot in the last moments of an archer's life. Above her the blue sky had turned grey and with a clap of thunder the first rain began falling.

The arm at her neck loosened, probably because a dead woman didn't need restraining, and the axe blade dragged a stinging line against her cheek. Spellbook's eyes widened and Bulma realised nothing hurt except her face, there was no arrow wound and the blue-clad archers were already down and useless, one moaning and the other still, probably dead. Another arrow sung past her and she heard Handaxes grunt, stagger and stumble to the ground. The rain intensified and Spellbook looked up at the sky, then to Bulma and her staff. It didn't take a prodigy to figure out that he thought she had cast something, but she lowered herself to draw the conclusion.

"Th-that's right!" She called out, suddenly brave again. "I have mastery of many schools of magic. Do you want to wait and see what the priest and I can work between us, or are you going to go running home?"

Spellbook laughed. "Little girl," he began, but when he took another step forward an arrow landed between his feet, piercing the hem of his robe. He hesitated, and lightning crackled to the earth, scorching the road a mere foot from where he stood.

"The woods are crawling with our archers," she added. "And I control the storm."

He seemed amused by this last comment, but his piercing eyes scanned the trees behind her. She thought the archers she claimed to be hiding were worrying him, even if her magical prowess was not.

"We'll let you go," she continued in a high voice, getting desperate. This man was older than her, poised and confident. She had no doubt he could take her in any fight, whether physical or magical, so she needed him to back down.

"And why would you do that, if you truly believe you have the upper hand?"

Bulma flicked her eyes to Krillin for support, but he was leant over Goku, lying on the ground in what she hoped was one of the pools of blood they had seen already stagnating on the road.

"So you can tell your superiors," she gambled. "Tell them there are those who would oppose you, your evil will not stand unchallenged."

Spellbook smirked and looked directly into her eyes, but Bulma could bluff with the best of them. She blew hair out of her face and tilted her chin up, meeting his gaze with confidence and defiance.

At last he said "very well," and made a short bow. To her surprise he pulled the arrow from his robe and backed away to the tree line from whence he had emerged, stopping on his way only once. He paused at the fallen tree and the still-living archer moaned, reached up a hand to the elegant mage. Wordlessly, Spellbook lifted one foot to rest on the archer's neck, then stepped heavily. The crack-crunch made Bulma's stomach lurch but she forced herself to maintain her attitude of power until the wizard had disappeared and she had heard him make his retreat on horseback.

She stood in place, unsure what to do first. She needed to check on Goku and Krillin, but her mind was alive with curiosity about the uprooted tree, and about the mystery archer hiding somewhere in the trees. She was also uncertain whether they had been rescued, or if one set of attackers had been driven off in favour of bandits who thought the caravan might still contain something of value.

Thunder cracked again, but she saw no lightning and the clouds were already parting. She pushed some wet hair off her face where it stung against the cut on her cheek and looked over to Krillin. Goku was sitting up and Krillin was preparing to pull out the second arrow. Not wanting to watch, Bulma turned her attention to the woods and cringed when she heard Goku's short shout of pain.

Scanning the treeline, Bulma saw nothing unusual until a rustling in the treetops caught her attention. As she watched, a tree leant forward and bent itself into a long bow beyond the wood into the edge of the road. Her first instinct was to assume this was not a tree, but some kind of eldritch creature she'd never encountered before, and she swung her staff around in front of her body defensively, but the tree stopped moving and a small figure came walking down its trunk with arms out for balance.

"Did you see me shoot that man?" Tarble asked, jumping off the tree with a broad smile. "I shot him twice."

The tree slowly righted itself, becoming once more a nameless inhabitant of the dense forest.

"I thought you ran away from us," Bulma said slowly. Her eyes slid away from Tarble to try and spot the other brother within the trees.

Tarble was quick to notice her gaze shift and identify the intention. "He's hiding. You folks didn't let him take his dagger when we left the keep, so he's at an advantage to stay out of sight, but you're unlikely to attack me without provocation because I've committed no crimes."

She studied his face for a while, trying to find signs of deception, but he seemed open and guileless. She wondered how old he was. Tarble looked all of twelve, but his brother was a small man, and the boy would make an unusually accomplished archer for twelve. "You would have been at more of an advantage to stay far away from us," she said at last.

He looked slightly embarrassed. "Vegeta wants me to go to Hjalmar and we… don't know the way. We thought we might just stay at a distance and track you, but we accidentally caught up. You should treat those arrow wounds before they go bad."

"Those were poison arrows," Goku said. "I feel terrible." At least, Bulma thought, the pool soaking into his trousers couldn't be blood of his own if he were conscious, sitting up and aware enough to be complaining.

"They were not," Tarble scoffed. "That's not the sort of magic they use. You're being soft."

"'They'?" Bulma asked. "What do you know about those people? Can you help Goku?"

She took one step towards Tarble and he took two back. "I'm not coming close enough for you to grab me," he said. He took another step and looked back at the trees.

She sighed. "Tell your brother to come out." She rested her staff against her chest and held both her palms out to the forest. "Goku's in no condition to cut anyone down and I'm not interested in a mage's duel. If you'll tell me about the _other_ necromancer we'll give you the way to Hjalmar and you can take your chances on evading the next set of do-gooders."

This last was a chance, but the more she thought about it the more convinced she was that Krillin was right about the second necromancer. In fact, if there were only one necromancer at play around that keep she doubted it was Vegeta. She'd seen him cast several times now, and while she couldn't identify _how_ he was casting, it was easy enough to see that _what_ he was casting was elemental magic. He hadn't performed a single act of necromancy that she had seen and when she'd outright asked him to do so he hadn't even seemed to know what she was talking about.

It felt like a long time before he appeared at the edge of the road, warily weaving through the last of the trees with his eyes on her.

"You need to treat it like frostbite," he said.

She cocked her head to the side slightly and he made a frustrated noise.

"His arrow wounds. Warm them up with a hot cloth or water, or the flesh will rot away."

"Thank you," Krillin said. His voice was cautious, but he stood to retrieve some scraps of cloth from the caravan. Goku scooted awkwardly out of the worst of the blood without standing, smearing a dark stain behind him.

"Do you know who they are?" Bulma asked.

He moved slowly up to stand behind Tarble. "Cult of the Cold God."

"Are you members?"

Tarble shook his head violently and Vegeta spat out a contemptuous "no".

"They control the ruling class in Yeran," Tarble explained.

Bulma reached back in her mind to her early geography lessons. She knew Yeran as the vast frozen land encompassing the southern tip of the known lands, but she hadn't even realised they had a ruling class, she'd been taught it was nothing more than a rough assemblage of various nomadic tribes.

"They tried to take us," the small boy continued. "When our father refused they razed the city."

"Be quiet, Tarble." There was sadness in Tarble's dark eyes, but anger in Vegeta's.

"All the villages we passed through…"

"Quiet."

She was uncomfortable with the raw emotion in Tarble's face, even in Vegeta's hand clenched tightly on the younger boy's arm, but she wanted to know more.

"You came all the way up here from Yeran? From Ungar?" Her brain reflexively recalled the name of the capital, memorised some long years ago for a test on world politics.

"Not Ungar," Vegeta said. "Our people live in the mountains, the southern tip of the great range. Or we did."

"Why did you come up here? It must have taken forever."

"We didn't have anywhere to go," said Tarble.

"Revenge," said Vegeta.


End file.
